Determined to Protect, Forbidden to Love

by Beverly Barton

  “You stay here. I’ll go the rest of the way alone,” Miguel said. “If Diego is here and he was telling me the truth—”

  “There you go again, playing God, issuing orders and thinking you have to do this alone.”

  “If Diego did set us up, there is no sense in both of us taking a chance, is there? If you hear gunfire, feel free to come to my rescue. Besides, if Diego was being honest with me, then J.J. is in that building and we’re probably going to need backup. You should wait here for Will Pierce and the other Dundee agents.”

  “Nice try,” Dom said. “But I’m not buying. We’ve come this far together, we’ll go the rest of the way side by side.”

  Miguel would have argued, but time was of the essence. “If Diego is waiting for us, he is probably in the alley between these two buildings.”

  Alert to every sound, prepared to act on a moment’s notice, they crept down the shadowy alleyway between the old canning plant and the three-story brick building beside it. Halfway down the alley, Miguel caught a glimpse of a man’s silhouette slinking along the wall, then disappearing into an alcove.

  Miguel glanced at Dom, who nodded and drew his 9 mm. They found Diego Fernandez pressed up against a closed door in the alcove. Miguel grabbed his half-brother by the lapels of his tailor-made sports jacket and yanked him out into the alley.

  “Where is she?” Miguel demanded.

  “In there.” Diego nodded toward the canning plant. “I’m not sure exactly where.”

  “If you’re lying to me, I’ll kill you,” Miguel told him.

  “If she’s not here, then Hector Padilla lied to me,” Diego said, pulling away from Miguel. “He’s the one who told me where they are keeping her.”

  “Why should we believe you?” Dom asked.

  “Because I can go in there and take Miguel—or you—straight to her, past any guards. Everyone knows that I am a close friend of el presidente’s.”

  “Yeah, so we’ve heard,” Dom said. “So why change horses in midstream?”

  “What?” Diego stared at Dom quizzically.

  “He is asking why, if you are such good friends with Hector Padilla, would you help me, a man you profess to hate?”

  “I do despise you, Ramirez,” Diego admitted. “But President Padilla has proven that he is not my friend. I hate him far more than I do you.”

  Miguel had to trust his gut instincts because there was no time for second-guessing. And his gut instincts told him that Diego was telling him the truth. He turned to Dom and said, “I will go with Diego. You stay here and wait for the others.”

  “What others?” Diego asked.

  “You did not think we would come here without arranging for backup, did you?” Miguel’s gaze clashed with his half-brother’s.

  “Very wise of you.” Diego nodded.

  Dom grabbed Miguel’s arm. “I don’t think you should—”

  “I have to be the one,” Miguel said. “Put yourself in my place. If she was your woman…”

  Dom huffed out an exasperated breath. “Okay. Okay.” He let go of Miguel’s arm. “You two go in first, but if I hear one gunshot or get a gut feeling things are going down all wrong, I’ll be a one-man cavalry to the rescue. And the minute the others show up, we’re coming in.”

  Miguel patted Dom on the shoulder, then turned to Diego and said, “I am ready.”

  The pain in J.J.’s side had grown progressively worse, but she hoped it was now about as bad as it was going to get. She figured she’d been here a couple of hours or close to it, since coming out of her drugged stupor. The outside light spilling through the high windows had begun to fade, which told her the sun would soon be setting. So far, she had seen only three men. Two goons that she pegged as flunkies and a third man who had ordered the other two outside to act as guard dogs.

  “I will keep Señorita Blair company until after the broadcast,” he had told the others. “El presidente will telephone me personally when the time comes.”

  “What broadcast?” she had asked.

  He had smiled wickedly, and she wondered why she had never noticed that evil glint in his eyes before now. “Miguel will make an announcement withdrawing from the presidential race at four-fifty this afternoon.” He had glanced at his wristwatch. “In approximately three minutes.”

  “Miguel will never—”

  “He will do it to save your life.”

  “No, he won’t,” she’d argued. “Miguel knows that I would not want him to sacrifice the future of his country to save me.” She had glowered at her captor, the man Miguel had called a friend. “Besides, he knows better than to trust his enemies. He knows I will be murdered regardless of what he does.”

  “Love is blind, is it not, señorita?”

  If she had thought talking to this man, reasoning with him, would do any good, she would have talked her head off, but she knew he would show her no mercy. No matter what Miguel did, whether he withdrew from the presidential race or not, his dear and trusted friend, Roberto Aznar, was going to kill her. And she suddenly realized that the son of a bitch would enjoy killing her, would take pleasure in destroying someone who meant so very much to Miguel. How he must hate Miguel. But why?

  A loud knock sounded on the closed door.

  “Señor?” one of the guards called out. “You have a visitor. Someone sent from el presidente himself. He wishes to see the señorita.”

  “Perhaps Miguel has already made the announcement,” Roberto said as he walked toward the door.

  When he opened it, J.J. strained to see who their visitor was. But before she caught a glimpse of the new arrival, Roberto laughed and shook the man’s hands.

  “Come in, Señor Fernandez, come in.”

  “President Padilla has sent me to watch the execution,” the man said. “He thought perhaps seeing you kill Ramirez’s American whore would amuse me.”

  When Roberto returned to the room, the other man came with him. She recognized him instantly. Diego Fernandez!

  “How do you plan to kill her?” Diego asked as he looked her over contemptuously.

  “I’m going to slit her lovely little throat.” Roberto walked over to the chair in which he’d been sitting, reached down beside it and picked up a long, leather sheath. He removed a knife with a gleaming twelve-inch blade.

  “Why do you hate Miguel so much?” The question popped out of J.J.’s mouth before she realized she’s spoken.

  Roberto glared at her. “Are you speaking to me or to Señor Fernandez?”

  “To you, you damn Benedict Arnold. I know why Fernandez hates Miguel.”

  “Americans have such a strange way of speaking, do they not?” Diego chuckled, then glanced at her.

  What was that odd look Diego Fernandez just gave her? Had she imagined it? Or had he actually tried to communicate to her with that peculiar expression?

  “You, Diego, hate Miguel because he is your father’s bastard son,” she said.

  “I hate him for that, yes.” Diego swooped down on her, his face right up in hers. “And I hate him for believing he, the son of a harlot, has a right to be president of my country.” Eye-to-eye, his warm breath on her face, Diego whispered, “Be prepared.”

  Be prepared for what? For Roberto killing her? No, that wasn’t it. He would have shouted his comment from the rooftops if he hadn’t wanted her alone to hear it. God, this didn’t make any sense. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear that Diego Fernandez intended to try to help her.

  He rolled his eyes and tilted his head backward ever so slightly as he backed away from her, then turned to Roberto, chuckling in a good-natured, buddy-to-buddy manner.

  “I am also curious, Aznar, as to why you hate my bastard half-brother. The whole world believes you are his good friend.”

  J.J. glanced toward the closed door, wondering if Diego had been trying to signal her to expect someone to come through that door.

  Was she losing her mind? Had she become delusional? What made her think that Diego Fernandez woul
d help her, that it was even remotely possible he had brought help?

  “I hate Miguel because he is a fool.” Roberto placed the knife on the chair. “When we first became friends, I knew he would one day run this country, but what I did not realize was that he actually meant all the things he said, that the promises he made the people were actually vows he took seriously. He wants this country to be a great democracy, with equal rights for all. Even women.” He glared at J.J. “He would make all people equal under the law.”

  “And that is not what you want, is it?” J.J. asked.

  “I want money and power. I believed that Miguel was the man who could give me these things, that they were the things he wanted. But I was wrong. I thought as he gained more power, he would realize how foolish his lofty ideas were, but he did not. He was not the man I thought he would become. I now know that only Hector Padilla can give me what I want.”

  Diego placed his hand on Roberto’s shoulder and led him away from J.J. “You did bring a bottle of wine, did you not, my friend, to celebrate later?”

  “No, but I can send one of the men to a nearby cantina to pick up a bottle.”

  He’s taking Roberto’s attention away from me, J.J. thought, and he is physically moving him as far away from me as possible. Was she right about Diego or was this simply wishful thinking on her part?

  Suddenly the outer door burst open. She caught a glimpse of Miguel as he stormed in, Dom Shea and several other men behind him. Roberto whirled around and knocked Diego aside, grabbed the deadly knife off the chair and lunged toward her. As he came down over her, aiming the knife directly at her heart, a single shot rang out. The bullet hit Roberto in the back of his head. Blood suddenly shot everywhere, spraying the floor and the walls and raining down on J.J. She clenched her jaws tightly to keep from screaming. As Roberto’s body dropped to the dirt floor, the twelve-inch blade fell from his hand and landed on the ground only seconds before he did.

  Miguel rushed to her, dropped on his knees and looked at her, relief in his eyes. Without saying a word, he untied her hands and then her feet.

  “How—how did you find me?” she asked as Miguel lifted her into his arms and carried her toward the door.

  “Diego Fernandez led us to you,” Miguel told her.

  She caught a glimpse of Dom Shea, Vic Noble and Will Pierce as Miguel carried her through the door and out onto the wharf. Several other men stood around watching over the two bodies lying at their feet. The two guards who had held her prisoner were also dead.

  “Why would Diego help you?” she asked.

  “Hush, querida,” Miguel said. “Stop asking me questions. I was half out of my mind, thinking I might have already lost you. Then I find you alive and I am forced to kill Roberto, a man who had been my friend…a man I thought had been my friend.”

  Miguel kept walking as he talked, carrying her down a long, shadowy alley, while the others followed. “Roberto was a traitor. He would have murdered you. And the brother who has hated me, who has plotted and worked against me, helped me. I owe him your life.

  “I was prepared to go before the people this afternoon to withdraw from the presidential race—for you. To save you because I would rather die myself, would rather see the whole world destroyed than to lose you. What kind of president would be willing to sacrifice a nation to save one woman?”

  J.J. winced as pain shot through her side when she lifted her arm and draped it around Miguel’s neck. She laid her head on his shoulder and said softly, “You wanted to sacrifice Mocorito to save me, possibly even believed you would do it, but when the moment came, you would have made the right decision. You would have done what you knew I wanted you to do, what I would have expected from the man I admire and respect…and love.”

  “Damn you, Jennifer.” He marched out into the street and straight to Dom’s rental car. “I am taking you back to the hospital and I am not leaving your side until you are well enough for me to put you on a plane back to America.”

  “Whatever you say, Miguel.” She closed her eyes and smiled. If he thought he was going to pack her off back to Atlanta, then he had another thought coming. Surely he didn’t believe that after she had come this close to death and now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt how he truly felt about her, that she would ever leave him. When she recovered and was released from the hospital, she had no intention of going anywhere, except straight to the presidential palace with Miguel when he won the election.

  Chapter 18

  True to his word, Miguel had stayed at the hospital day and night for the next seventy-two hours—except for some sort of secret mission that had taken him away for an hour yesterday. Then this morning, Juan Esteban had arranged for a private-duty nurse for J.J. so that she could be sent home. Home to Miguel’s house, not home to Atlanta. She suspected that the hospital staff had begged Juan to find a way to remove Miguel from the premises because not only had he guarded J.J. like a hawk, questioning everyone about everything they did, even tasting her food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned, but he also told the nurses that he would check J.J.’s vital signs himself.

  So, here she was wearing a yellow silk nightgown, lying in the middle of Miguel’s king-size bed and propped into a sitting position with six feather pillows. Her gunshot wound was healing nicely and although it would leave an ugly scar, Juan had assured her the scar could be all but erased with plastic surgery. Ramona had been fussing over her like a mother hen, bringing her more food than she could eat in two days, let alone at one meal. Aunt Josephina and Seina had sent Nurse Orlando downstairs and told her to take a long break. They chatted away with J.J. while they arranged the three dozen floral arrangements that had been brought upstairs, placing half in the sitting room and the other half in the bedroom so that J.J. could see and enjoy them from her bed. She was told that another three dozen decorated every room in the house and Miguel had ordered that any others that arrived today be sent to St. Augustine’s.

  The three women had shooed Miguel downstairs, where “the men” were waiting for him. He had gone, if somewhat reluctantly. J.J. suspected that “the men” consisted of two Dundee agents, one CIA agent and Emilio Lopez. And perhaps even Diego Fernandez. She had tried to bring up Diego’s name several times while she’d been in the hospital and every time, Miguel had told her that they would discuss his half-brother later.

  “Will you two stop fussing,” J.J. said. “Come over and sit and tell me what’s going on.” She patted the bed.

  Aunt Josephina and Seina glanced at each other.

  “Perhaps we should go,” Seina said. “You need to rest. Miguel cautioned us not to let you overtire yourself.”

  “You two are not going anywhere. Something is going on and I want to know exactly what it is.”

  Aunt Josephina smiled guilelessly. “Whatever do you think we could possibly know, my dear Jennifer? We are only women. You do not think the men would share any information with us.”

  “Cut the bull, Aunt Josephina.” J.J. couldn’t help laughing when the old woman’s mouth fell open. “Come on. Woman-to-woman. Miguel won’t tell me anything. He just keeps saying that everything is fine, that I should not worry. And Dom and Vic haven’t even been allowed to do more than say hi and bye to me in the past three days.”

  Seina sighed. Aunt Josephina glanced at the closed door.

  “Hector Padilla has been arrested,” Seina said, practically whispering. “Only this morning. He was caught trying to escape from Nava.”

  “What?” Of all the things she had expected to hear, this wasn’t one of them.

  “My brother, Diego, went on television with Miguel yesterday and told the people what President Padilla had been doing and that he planned, when he was reelected, to overthrow the government and form a new dictatorship.” Seina sat down on the edge of the bed. “As soon as they knew that President Padilla had lost Diego’s support and the support of all the other important families in Nava, his own cabinet members turned against him and agreed to testify in cour
t about what they knew.”

  “Holy sh—” Why hadn’t Miguel shared all this incredible news with her? “So this means that Miguel will become president by default, right?”

  Aunt Josephina shook her head. “No, no. Our Miguel insists that the Federalist Party choose another candidate. He says it is the only fair thing to do.”

  J.J. smiled. “Our Miguel would say that wouldn’t he? That man has to be the most honorable, most noble man on God’s green earth.”

  “Today I am proud of both my brothers,” Seina said, but she had a bittersweet expression on her face. “Diego is not a bad man and in the end, he did what was right.”

  “He saved my life,” J.J. told her. “You know that don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know, but he—he bargained with Miguel for your life.”

  “What do you mean?” J.J. asked.

  “Miguel does not want her upset,” Aunt Josephina said.

  “I’m not upset.” J.J. reached out for Seina’s hand.

  Miguel’s young half-sister grasped her hand and looked at her pleadingly. “Diego did many bad things for Hector Padilla and he did them because he hated Miguel.”

  “That’s not exactly a surprise to me.”

  “When Diego learned where you were being held, he used that information to force Miguel to agree to pardon him for all of his crimes once Miguel is elected president.”

  “Oh, I see. So, Diego won’t be punished for anything he did, is that it?”

  “Yes, that is correct. Of course, he did not have to agree to testify against President Padilla nor did he have to contact all his friends and associates, many fellow Federalists, and tell them the truth about the president, but he did. And he went on television with Miguel and—”